There is no moral imperative driving this message, no calls for a life of self-sacrifice, no direct calls for intensive reflection, not even a real punch line to the story. I will let you decide if these thoughts call for that. I’m not even going to get religious on you, as I did yesterday.
Most of what I write here at PJ Media is political in nature, but occasionally, I’ll march off without warning into the weeds of social phenomenon or into the territory of my own memory. This piece is the latter.
I suppose this could be called a bit of self-indulgence, relating a tale from my own childhood. I hope you’ll forgive me for this. This time of year brings that out in most people. They start thinking of Christmases gone by, and for a short time, they find themselves living in what Al Stewart called “time passages.” That’s me, just now, wanting to pass along memories I think you’ll appreciate.
This is a working example of the childlike sense of wonder I spoke of yesterday. I suppose we can call yesterday’s piece the lesson and this the practical application. To that end, I’ll relate the tale to you, in the hope that you see something of your own childhood in it. After all, if you can make a connection with someone’s past and, at the least, in their imagination, in your own storytelling, that’s when the magic happens.
I’m going to paint you a word picture of a Christmas Eve more years ago than I care to tell you. (Shrug.) I couldn’t have been much more than 12 or 14 years old. It was a small thing, but as small things often do, it made a lasting impression on my then-young mind — one that, thankfully, I’ve never lost.
For some reason, and I don’t fully recall why, we happened to be at my maternal grandmother’s farmhouse. We weren’t there for long, perhaps 30 minutes or so. I think she must have come with us to Christmas services that night, and apparently, my father was performing transportation duty.
You see, my grandmother, sometime in the late fifties, had bought a farmhouse sixty-some-odd miles out of town, and perhaps five miles off the nearest paved road. We’re talking isolation, here. She was one who loved nature in all its forms. For many years, she had two houses. One was in the city, in a neighborhood which had never been all that good, as I remember it. She lived in town during the week, because she worked at a manufacturing plant just around the corner. It was a factory where I myself ended up working years later, after she had passed. I’ve always wondered what she would have thought of that.
Anyway, on the weekends, she jumped into her battered 1952 Chevy and came down to her somewhat beat-up and certainly ancient farmhouse. The place had to be well over 100 years old when she moved into it, closer to 200 years old now. I stopped by there a couple of weeks ago and found everything was very much as I remembered it. The barn is gone now, its timbers long since affected by water over the years. My grandmother had it removed from the property, along with the chicken coop, lest they fall over on their own, but she could not remove them from my childhood memory. Nor, I think, did she intend to. She seemed to understand that, for me, my brother and sister, and many cousins, this was a place for making memories — and the importance of doing so.
She has long since passed on, of course. But to give you an idea of how much she loved the place, she’s buried on a hill on the opposite side of the valley, in a place where you can see the farmhouse.
The property itself was far enough off the beaten path that it took a long-distance call to contact the fire department or the police, back when long-distance telephone calls were both something special and pricey. Grandma tended to stay in the farmhouse on holidays, too. Every chance she had, really. I can see her, in my mind’s eye, sitting on the porch in the summertime, bird book in one hand and a really good set of binoculars in the other. Not on this night, though. Far too cold for birds, and besides, the porch swing was covered with snow.
We got to the farmhouse, and everyone but me went inside. I knew we’d be leaving shortly, so I saw no need for going in. Anyway, the darkness and the cold night were somehow calling to me.
As I say, it was a cold, clear night, nearly zero, in fact. The clear skies you get when snowstorms are done with you, for the time being. Around this part of the country, when winter storms go through, the skies clear and the temps drop like they’ve been poleaxed. In this case, it resulted in the kind of night where the stars far outshone any Christmas lights that might have been in someone’s outdoor display. They looked like, as Charlie Daniels once said, diamonds on black velvet stretching from horizon to horizon, with the huge gem of a full moon as the centerpiece. A remarkable sight.
Being the young boy I was at the time, I suspect that between being dressed up for Christmas services, sitting through those services, and another hour or so in the car getting there and back, I hadn’t had any chance to blow off steam in several hours. My mother expressed mild reservations about the welfare of my good clothes, particularly my shoes, then let it pass when she noted I had my winter boots on, the kind you pull over your shoes. (Boy, that dates the scene all by itself, doesn’t it?) Satisfied, she shrugged and went about attending to what she’d come to do.
So, off I walked into the cold night for a brief respite from being around people all evening. I suppose there was a certain level of boyish excitement over Christmas and the gifts that would certainly come in the morning. It quickened my steps as I plodded through the snow. The cold did, too. For some reason, even today, I always find myself walking just a shade faster when it’s cold outside.
Suddenly, I found myself about half a mile away from the farmhouse. In my speed and centered on my own thoughts, I’d covered rather more ground than I had intended. I stopped to turn around and looked at the farmhouse. I remember the sight of the house lights through the windows and the porch light over the distance covered. It looked warm and inviting. But something wanted me to stay for a moment.
The farmhouse, which was painted white, gave off a surreal, blue-tinted glow as it reflected the light from the full moon. It was at that point that I noticed that the snow that had fallen for the last few days, which was fairly well unspoiled this far away from the city, also had the same glow. The entire valley, in fact, was bathed in blue-tinted moonlight and shadows. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the place look so beautiful before, or, for that matter, since. I had always thought of farm fields in winter being bereft of life, and for that matter, of joy. Not so, tonight. Instead, I found, to my surprise and wonder, that there was a beauty here. Beauty, despite the isolation — or was it because of it?
I paused in the wonder of the moment. It was hard not to.
Have you ever sat back or stood alone and simply listened to the quiet? Particularly at night? Your senses, used to being flooded with sounds and sights, become starved for input; you start paying closer attention to what little sound and sight there is. You become more attuned, more aware. And somehow, more alive.
I listened to the little bit of wind that was coming down the valley, chilling the tips of my ears and fingers. I often do that — simply focus on available sound — but not often in winter, and seldom at night. Normally, during the day in the summer months in this valley, you can hear all sorts of animals, insects, and birds — all the things my grandmother had found so attractive here in the first place. Usually, you can also hear jet planes going overhead, even ones you couldn’t see. Well, back in those days, it would have been turboprops, mostly. This was, after all, the mid-sixties.
That night, there was a train, I recall. The Erie Railroad had put up a mainline through the valley in 1852 and still owned it at the time, a little over 100 years later. It ran perhaps six miles to the north of the house. It belongs to Norfolk Southern these days. On most summer nights, if the crickets were quiet enough, you could hear the horn. Often, you could hear the diesel engines. This winter night, it was so quiet that you could hear every wheel on that train. You could count every axle as it bounced over the switch just to the west of the little town. You could hear every knuckle squeak as it strained against the others going over uneven spaces of track. I stood still in the cold, breath rising in steam about my head, listening. Amazed. Wondering, in that I could hear so much detail from such a great distance, being carried on the cold north wind that night.
Once the train faded out of hearing, I could hear voices. Now, understand, the nearest house, other than the farmhouse, was three miles or so away, and in the middle of that deep valley, the echoes were rather pronounced and confusing. I had no idea where the voices were coming from or what they were saying, but it didn’t really matter. I could hear that they certainly sounded happy. And yes, I could hear, just by listening, the happiness — no, the joy — in the voices. It was that quiet. Remarkable!
I don’t fully understand why I found this experience such a moving one. Maybe it was the combination of the cold and the blackness of the night sky (aside from the moon and stars, of course) that made me feel particularly lonely.
Well, maybe lonely isn’t exactly the right word, because I swear to you, I almost felt that I could hear the voice of God himself speaking to me, in that place.
Just as I started entertaining that odd thought, midnight came, and with it, the sound of bells. To the south, a single joyous chime over and over and over again. To the north and a bit to the east, a carillon that I didn’t even know existed started to play, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”
I sang along, very softly. Reverently. The situation seemed to call for some degree of reverence. There was a kind of awe, of wonder, in all of this, to a degree which I’ve never felt in any church, and I’ve been in many, in the years since that night.
After a time, the cold started to seep in, and so, I turned around and started back to the house. I observed my shadow in the snow as I walked along, placed there by the remarkably bright moonlight behind me, and the sound of the snow as it cracked and crunched beneath my feet. It was easy enough to imagine that if I turned around, a host of angels would be there, ready to burst into song. The moon was certainly bright enough that night, and the small miracles that I had been exposed to on a simple Christmas Eve walk had prepared me for no less. I didn’t dare turn around, though, for fear of breaking the spell somehow.
About this time, I heard my mother’s voice sweeping up the valley on the wind, calling my name. My parents were ready to leave. I shook my head, smiling. My timing, apparently, was perfect.
Related: The Wonder-Filled Eyes of a Child
We got back into the ’66 Chevy Bel Air that Dad drove at the time and traveled the sixty-odd miles to our home. I remember that I was rather subdued on the trip. If either of my parents noticed the change, they didn’t say anything. Perhaps they thought, it being a long day, that I was tired.
That wasn’t it at all, however. Truth is, I was still reveling in the experience. I felt I’d been given a special gift that night. That, regardless of whatever transitory gifts may have been waiting for me under the tree at home come the morning, I’d always have this one.
I was right, too. I remember it all very clearly today, just as I’ve described to you here.
That very special and irreplaceable gift, that sense of wonder, is refreshed and renewed every time I hear a Christmas carillon. Loud or soft, near or far, I’m always straining to hear it come down the valley on the clear midnight wind, with the cold nipping at my ears, and the moon — or is that a band of angels? — over my shoulder.
May you be blessed with that sense of wonder this Christmas.
Merry Christmas! Like the line poles along the highway, days like this go by faster than you think. VIP memberships at PJ Media are a great last-minute Christmas gift, but don’t forget to get one for yourself. Use promo code MERRY74 for 74% off your bill in both cases.
